Woman's Voice
by RowenaR
Summary: There's this all-female team on Atlantis... and they have their stories, too. Lose series of one-shots, all based on challenges on the German Stargate forum stargate-project. #2: Sergeant Dusty Mehra isn't in the mood for some all women ritual stuff.
1. Private Consultation

**Author:** RowenaR

**Rating:** K+

**Category:** Gen

**Disclaimer:** Stargate belongs to Gekko and… all those other people making money with it. Anyway, I don't. Honestly. So – I don't own, you don't sue. Deal?

**Summary:** Major Anne Teldy doesn't want a substitute for Captain Alicia Vega... but it seems that she doesn't have a choice. Answer to a challenge on the German forum stargate-project.

**A/N:** This is the first of to date two pieces on the team from Whispers as an answer to regular challenges on stargate-project. I'll try not to comment on the way challenges are run there (but I _will_ say that it _sucks_) but I'll give you the results (and no, up to now I haven't won a single one... but I'm working on it) and let you judge them. This challenge's theme was _**fog**_, BTW. Hope you like it :)

Anyway, as always: Not a native speaker, so please excuse any weird grammatical constructions, run-ons and typos. Feedback will earn you a cookie, flames will roast my marshmellows.

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><p><strong>Private Consultation<strong>

"_Lower the curtain down in Memphis,  
>Lower the curtain down all right,<br>I got no time for private consultation,  
>Under the Milky Way tonight."<em>

_The Church, "Under the Milky Way"_

She hates paper work. Or maybe she just hates _this_ paper work. Staring at the folder in front of her, she contemplates what Woolsey and her COs would say if she just gave it back unopened and told them she doesn't mind leading a team that has only three members in total.

Thorough as she is, she knows that there's no actual written rule that says that a Gate team needs to have _four_ members. There is, for example, SG1 that had five members ever since she came to the SGC and she'd be quick to point out to everyone that it wouldn't throw a very good light on the SGC if anyone got the feeling they were giving out favors to anyone, deserved or not, if she were really to butt heads over the whole replacement member thing.

And she really _is_ tempted to do so. She'd tried to be professional about losing Alicia on that stupid misty planet but she never quite managed it. Of course she knows that people like to call her Major Indifferent, knowing only the side she shows them outside of the protective walls of her quarters but inside those quarters… she keeps tossing and turning, wondering what she could have done differently to prevent Alicia from dying.

She's not quite sure what's worse about losing Alicia; that she was the first soldier she lost on her first Gate team command or that she lost a _friend_. Or maybe it's everything together… everything together that makes it so hard for her to open the folder Lorne gave her this morning after the routine briefing, telling her he'd like her to have a look at it and see if that person might be a good replacement for Alicia.

Polite as Lorne always is, he'd phrased it as a recommendation but she knows him well enough to know that it was _meant_ as an order, seeing as in the three months since Alicia's death she hasn't made at least _one_ formal – or even _in_formal – request for a new team member. Instead, Mehra, Allison and she had taken in everyone they'd temporarily assigned to the team, always fitting the requirements of the respective mission. But by some unspoken agreement, they'd never actually made a move to maybe invite one of the temporary replacements to become a permanent team member.

She'd known, of course, that the top troika wouldn't watch this into all eternity and that they'd whack her over the head sooner or later but… that doesn't make it any easier to simply open the folder and see who they want to foist on the team. For some reason she has a feeling that whoever that is will not fit with the team.

It's not that she thinks there aren't any people able to keep up with them… it's that she thinks that she doesn't want outsiders to get a glimpse into her team. Of course it's stupid but the thing is… she might have told Sheppard that she chose her members on the grounds of being the best in their respective fields but the truth is: most of all they are – or in Alicia's case, _were_ – all misfits.

People might think, for example, that she's a by the book battleaxe kind of career soldiers that wants to make her way up top as fast as she can but they don't know about the battles she had to fight at home to be allowed to get into Air Force ROTC… or to study Mechanical Engineering… or to study _at all_. She never told anyone – apart from Allison, that is – that she had had to sever her ties to her family to be free to do what she had wanted to do for her entire life.

All through college and her first years of service, she'd stayed at the dormitory or on the base when everyone else was going home for the holidays or breaks between terms or even just the weekend because _the dormitory and the bases_ had been her home. Only recently her parents tried to reach out to her again but she'll probably always feel like an outsider because she had chosen her life over her family.

And Alicia… There had always been rumors going around about Alicia. She'd never given anything on them… because she knew they were true. She knew it was true that Alicia preferred women over men but she never cared about that. Alicia had told her about that but she'd just shrugged and told her that if anyone asked, Alicia should tell them to settle it with her CO. And she absolutely would have. Right from the beginning, she had felt fiercely protective of her team and she still does, maybe even more than before Alicia's death.

She feels protective whenever McKay thinks it's a good idea to wreck his misgivings, frustrations and his stupid misogyny – and sometimes she also thinks it's just plain _jealousy_ for being together with Carson Beckett – on Allison and when Allison feels like she doesn't belong in the scientific community for actually _liking_ to go off-world and getting into a good scrape now and then.

And she feels protective of Mehra whenever she hears people bitching about her behind her back… even though her Sergeant would probably snort and call her some of those not so nice names Marines have for Airmen if she ever knew that her Zoomie CO would like to punch all the people in the face who think that Mehra's just a stupid chick with a big gun in her hand who joined the Marines because she was eager to get laid.

She also feels protective when Allison takes a few days off to accompany Beckett on his Doctors Without Borders in Space missions because she doesn't want her team members to get into risky situations without her being there – she's very good at suppressing the thought that it was of no use to _Alicia_ that she was there on the mist planet – and she feels protective of Mehra when they go on leave to Earth and she just throws them a casual salute and jumps into a taxi to catch the next plane to Burkburnett, Oklahoma because she knows Mehra will spend too much time with her ex-husband again and that never ends well.

So no, she doesn't want another member on her team; another person that might hurt or insult Allison or Mehra… who might cause them pain again when they lose him – because she's pretty sure they gave a her a male new member, seeing as all their temporary replacements had been men, and she feels anger about that coming up again. As if an all-female team was something that should never have happened.

Taking a deep breath, she stares at the folder again… and in one of those outbursts she only reserves for when she's alone, she shoves it off her desk with an inarticulate sound of frustration and anger – at what in particular, she isn't even sure… maybe Michael's experiments for killing Alicia or Sheppard and Lorne for forcing someone on her or maybe just life and the universe in general – and sends sheets of paper flying through the air. She doesn't want to look, just wants to punch someone or maybe just the wall, wants to… but inevitably, her gaze falls on the sheet of paper that landed in her lap and…

And there's a picture on it and a name, and it's _female_… an Air Force Lieutenant, with her blond hair pinned up and looking so excruciatingly _young_… There's a knock on the door to the broom closet that serves as her office and before she's known – later she will blame the slight haze in her head at discovering that apparently, the troika _did_ think an all-female team was something worth keeping, after all – she answered it.

Nothing happens for a second or two but then the door opens and… reveals the blond Lieutenant from the folder she sent flying off her desk just a few moments ago. For a moment, they just stare at each other but then the young woman seems to have remembered what's expected of a junior officer entering the office of a Major and she raises her hand to her head in a salute and says crisply, "Lieutenant Tamara Johansen, reporting as ordered, ma'am."

Her first impulse is to be annoyed at how _properly_ this one behaves and she thinks she'll never fit in a team of misfits but then… she notices a flicker in Johansen's eyes, a slight shaking of the hand that's still poised for salute… and she realizes… that she should have read those records after all because _something_ tells her the Lieutenant has her own misfit story to tell.

She nods, deciding to ignore that the Lieutenant seems to have decided to ignore the scattered pages on the floor, and gestures to the chair opposite her desk. "Have a seat, Lieutenant." Johansen does as she's told and she picks up the page in her lap to put it on the desk before her. Taking another minute to compose herself, she has another look at the Lieutenant and finds her assessment confirmed, seeing how Johansen crosses her legs and seems to have to force herself to appear alert and unfazed.

Well, she thinks, no one will ever replace Alicia on their team… but maybe no one _needs_ to replace Alicia, either. She wills herself to try a little encouraging smile, both for her and Johansen's sake and to finally behave like the commanding officer of a Gate team again. "So," she begins and thinks that maybe she doesn't have to have that confrontation about the necessary number of people on a Gate team with Sheppard and Lorne after all, "it says here you've been serving on… oh, Icarus Base. Well, that definitely sounds interesting…"


	2. Well Behaved Women

**A/N:** Here it is, the second installment to the lose series about Major Anne Teldy's team. This time the challenge was **memory** and it's Dusty's turn. So, as **mac** said, language warning. Severe one. Seriously, I mean. Dusty really does show us how to cuss like a Marine...

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><p><strong>Well Behaved Women<strong>

"_Well behaved women rarely made history." – Eleanor Roosevelt_

And it's another alien harvest festival. Somehow she hopes it'll involve drugs because she could do with some now. In fact, she could do with a lot of them for quite a while. Ever since Captain Vega died, to be precise.

So Captain Vega wasn't the first fellow soldier on one of the teams she was on who bought it. Captain Vega wasn't even the first _friend_ – it never mattered to her what she called her friends, not even when she calls them 'ma'am" most of the time – to have bought it on her watch. But there's something about the death of the Cap that makes her fucking furious, even though it's been a couple of months now and they got a replacement.

Johanson is pretty much okay, for a medic and a Zoomie and she doesn't lay any blame on the LT… but she does on all those people who keep spreading nasty rumors about the late Cap and about her team leader Major Teldy – toughest bitch of a Zoomie she's ever seen, and that's a big fucking _compliment_ – and even good Dr. Porter. It's not the rumors about herself so much, seeing as she's used to people exchanging exciting bits of crap about her. Has always been, even before she joined the Corps, actually.

There's nasty stuff flying around about Vega and Teldy and Porter as well though – and she's pretty sure she's heard some people bullshitting about their medic and some Colonel from a previous posting as well – and that's what gets to her. They're her team, dammit, and nobody talks shit about _her team_.

It's all about them all being women and getting another woman on the team, even after the experiment – what experiment, she wants to ask the idiots and then cite to them every bit of hundreds of pages, both official and not really official about the Lioness program in fucking Iraq and the development of a similar program in Afghanistan – obviously failed and some crap about Vega having been a lesbian.

She was, of course, but she wonders what that's got to do with the way she met her maker or the way she fought side by side with them through every stupid backwater planet shithole they came across under orders from the Atlantis brass. Seriously, some people… she'd like to shake her head now but the ceremony they were forced to attend with a couple of other Atlantis women is about to start and she's pretty sure Teldy would have her ass if she caught her showing her private feelings on a job.

So she does away with the head shaking and the eye rolling and even discretely had disposed of the ever present chewing gum a while back and she awaits what's going to happen now. The society they came across is somehow a part time matriarchy of some sorts and they're here to celebrate some kind of exclusively women event with the locals, having been invited over food talks, or at least that's what she remembers about the mission specs.

Right now, the moonlight is shining down and giving an eerie glow to the scene; about ten or fifteen women, both from Atlantis and locals, standing around in a circle in a clearing. She feels uneasy but not because of the moonlight. They had to leave their firearms behind and damn, she wants her P90 and her Beretta back. Actually, she feels only half human without them, having been drilled to _never_ _ever_ walk around without her weapons all through boot camp to all the survival missions various members of the Atlantis command stuff had and probably will have in store for the grunts.

One of the local women now steps forward and says, "Now is the moment we have come here for. I would like to ask everyone of you to step forward, one by one and give us the name of a woman. It can be a friend or a mentor or a very important ancestor; it does not matter who it is, as long as it is someone that has deeply impressed you or has been very important for your life. We will honor them by speaking their name here so they will never be forgotten, dead or alive."

Well, she thinks, that sounds like a nice idea, actually. Certainly better than talking crap about soldiers that got KIA. She's got no idea what to say but it's gonna come to her, she's pretty sure about that. She's also still some time left, seeing as the round started from left of the local woman and there are a couple of girls between them. First the locals start with foreign sounding names… but she's surprised to hear that there's an "Elizabeth Weir" among them. She only came here a couple of months ago but the admiration and respect with which the people in the city who've known her speak of her talks enough to tell she must have been a kick-ass leader.

And the round goes on.

"Christa McAuliffe," Daria Lewis, one of the New Zealanders says solemnly and she wonders why it's a Kiwi who says that but yeah, that doesn't really matter anything, seeing as they saw the _Challenger_ explode all over the world and to be touched by the crew's fate you didn't necessarily have to be a citizen of the US of A.

Then Antje Dammhagen, one of the couple of Germans in the city steps forward. "Rosa Luxemburg," the German says and she thinks she remembers reading somewhere in school or something that Luxemburg was one of those early German commies who wrote impossibly long and boring tractates with a fucking scary load of truth in it.

There's Captain Lavrentya Omashevskaya stepping up now, proudly announcing, "Valentina Tereshkova," and she remembers that one from reading up on cosmonauts or whatever the Russians call their astronauts in boot camp because she was so bored that comics just wouldn't cut it and being genuinely in awe of the first woman in space. It's a good choice, she thinks, making a mental note to congratulate Omashevskaya on it later.

After a couple of other prominent and private ancestors, mentors, friends and whatnot it's finally her turn and she kind of still hasn't made up her mind but there's a name there anyway and feels right in some inexplicable way so she steps up and throws in her lot with, "Captain Alicia Vega."

Porter and Teldy suddenly come forward as well, both at the same time and they echo her with saying, "Captain Alicia Vega." She doesn't look at them but she doesn't need to anyway; to know that they have the same expression of defiance and pride and respect on their faces that she has. Fuck yeah, the Cap deserved that and so much more.

Johanson is next, and she gives the LT credit for not letting them see anything she might have felt about her team's pledge of allegiance to a dead soldier… the one she replaced. When she steps forward, the name she says is, "Dr. Lisa Park," with a kind of lingering sadness along the steadfast calmness or something and she wonders who that was and what happened to her. Maybe she'll ask the LT about it someday.

But anyway, when they're done there's a feast and hey, free food, so why not go and have a bite of it since they're already here and everything. They even get their firearms back which makes her feel infinitely more at ease. Enough that she can have a good time with her team, cracking stupid Marine jokes that make even Teldy and the LT laugh, have a tremendously fun conversation with Omashevskaya on the Russian space program – the bits she's allowed to talk about anyway – and generally relax for the first time after that shithole planet with Michael's eyeless wonders.

Vega, she thinks, would have loved it and when they – the LT included because they're a team now and that's enough – raise a private toast to the Cap she thinks coming here maybe wasn't such a crappy idea after all.

Actually… actually she thinks that it feels fucking _good_ to be here, among people… _women_ who just _understand_ and yeah, maybe Teldy should do the female service members and off-world personnel round table thing after all. She's not that much about female soldiers and the whole feminism thing but… just talking among the girls sure would be a nice alternative to hanging around with those shit talking dickheads in the Marine common rooms every evening. Yeah… it definitely would.


End file.
